1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for making proportioned food items, particularly meat, more particularly, the present invention relates to an improved apparatus and method for creating poultry breast fillet portions of a selected shape and weight.
2. Description of the Related Art
The food industry has a high demand for a highly uniform meat and poultry fillet portions, and particularly for poultry breast portions. This demand initially was done by manual cutting to attempt to prepare precise sizes and shapes of poultry breast fillets.
However, in addition to being labor-intensive, the individual skill of the hand trimmer led to products less uniform than was desired and at an inconsistent production volume.
Other prior art attempts to address this demand are disclosed in prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,941,379; 5,569,070; and 6,383,068 B1.
It should be noted that a whole chicken breast fillet is often referred to in the industry as a whole butterfly and comprises the muscle meat of a chicken breast which includes the thicker breast and shoulder forward portion which tapers rearwardly to the thinner tail portion and laterally to the rib meat. The outer portions of the rib meat is most often not included in the controlled breast portions of higher market value. The thicker breast and shoulder portion is generally about twice the thickness of the tail portion, particularly in those poultry breast whole butterfly cuts weighing nearly a pound or more.
The first two mentioned patents offered as an improvement over hand trimming the controlled portion from poultry breast meat, however, each exhibited some drawbacks which some in the industry deemed as less than fully satisfactory.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,383,068 B1 provided another form of apparatus for producing poultry breast portions from a whole poultry breast butterfly which some skilled in the art believe represents a significant improvement relative to the uniformity of the size and shape of the breast fillets produced.
However, this latter patent discloses an apparatus which is relatively complex in construction and large in size and requires significant plant space. The construction also requires a degree of maintenance considered to be higher than desired. Further, while the size and shape of the controlled portions of breast fillets produced are generally satisfactorily uniform, the remaining trim portion of the poultry breast from which the controlled portions are cut are of a size and shape which cannot be fully utilized for sale at as high a price as desirable. When one considers that the uniform controlled breast portions or fillet portions currently highly sought by the industry from a single whole poultry breast typically weigh between about 70 to 92 grams or about 3 to 3.5 ounces and the whole breast meat butterfly weighs between about 14 to 24 ounces, this leftover trim portion represents a significant amount of the total available breast meat product.
Heretofore, the shape and condition of this leftover trim portion has been hand trimmed to attempt to produce an additional piece of poultry breast of uniform weight, size and shape which has a higher market value. However, such attempts have been less than satisfactory and often a very significant portion of the leftover trim must be sold at a price considerably less than that for a controlled, more uniform piece of breast meat having a shape suitable for sale as a fillet or cutlet portion. The loss of value represented by the difference between the market price of a well-proportioned, uniform portion of poultry breast and the current leftover trim portion produced by prior machines may be as high as 75 cents per pound or greater.
Such a price difference represents a loss of millions of dollars for a high volume producer of controlled portions of poultry breast on an annual basis. The prior attempts to solve this problem with a less complex, efficient apparatus having low maintenance and providing improved results have been less than satisfactory prior to the present invention.